Monday, 1 August 2016

The current obsession with taking selfies is most annoying, especially when you are trying to work!!
I was recently at a venue where the stage was barely a foot high. As I walked on to do my first number this attention seeking, selfish mare tried to clamber up the step to take a selfie with me.
I quickly ushered her back onto the floor and carried on with my number.
In a sulky protest she placed herself dead centre in front of the stage with her back to me.
When I picked up the microphone the first thing I said was for her to sit down. She refused. This gave me the opening I needed.
"Of course, silly me. You spend all your working day on your back or on a street corner. You don't know how to sit down."
She behaved herself for the rest of the night.

Sunday, 26 June 2016

Very occasionally I find myself doing two shows in one day.
At my advanced age I wouldn't want to do it very often but today proved .... educational.
So it was an unusual evening that went better than expected, despite the Glastonbury-style mud at the first venue where we were performing in an inflatable pub in the back garden of Big Brother's Chelsea Singh’s doppelganger and his white ex-hippy wife.
It hadn't occured to them to consider that I had to walk in high heels across their carefully manicure lawn. Some hastily thrown down planking and carpets soon sorted that problem.
The daughter was much better looking than either of them deserved and had obviously picked up some bad habits from her mother. As the stripper dragged the bride-to-be onto the floor and positioned her on all fours, she obviously went into auto-pilot mode and discreetly reached round and slid her thong to one side!

Friday, 20 May 2016

Sometimes a gig is cancelled. It is inevitable in the grand scheme of things that, for various legitimate reasons, occasionally an event can't go ahead.
Tonight was one of the worst, most unprofessional cancellations I have ever come across (almost).
I was booked to do a Hen Night in a large (very large) nightclub in a city over 100 miles away. Bearing in mind that it is a Friday and I knew that there was wholesale traffic diversions in the city, I left early, ensuring I had plenty of time to skirt round any commuter hold-ups and to try and wend my way through the closed roads and diversions near the venue.
The organisers had asked for me to arrive for 7pm so imagine my horror, disgust and downright fury when I got a text at 6.15 to say the event had been cancelled (no doubt through poor ticket sales) with no thought for us performers. I imagine that none of the strippers, who would have been recruited locally to keep their fees down, would have left home yet but I had done 100 miles by then. I was barely 10 miles from the venue when I had to turn back.
The Agent has been informed and has been instructed to press for my full fee as I did actually turn up even if I didn't exactly knock on the door.
Should the venue renege on their contractual obligations then I will be naming and shaming the venue in due course. I will also be involving Equity to recover my fee through the courts and to blacklist the venue.
Update 26/6/16 - The agent is currently suing the venue for our full fees

Tuesday, 5 April 2016

Recently I was booked to do a ladies' night in the North East. I was asked to be there for 7pm. On arrival I spoke to the organiser/manager of the venue and she said she wanted to start the show at 8.30, which was when she was told the strippers would arrive.
I spoke to the DJ/sound engineer and, as he couldn't get his system to work properly, I said I would put my system in and use it for the evening. Despite the initial problems he eventually got his to work.
So far, so good.
I started to get ready and the boys (!) arrived just as I was due to go on. Hurriedly I told the first guy he would be onstage at 9pm and to get ready.
This was when the disagreements started. He said he wanted to go on at 9.20. That would have meant a 20 minute gap between when I finished my first spot and when he came on. I put my foot down and insisted he was ready to go on at 9pm.
He wasn't!
At 9pm he was still faffing around in the dressing room. I walked off the stage and asked for his music. He didn't have any! He had assumed that the DJ would have some. I said 'I am the DJ!' Eventually he went out on stage having picked a girl out of the audience before he even started and did exactly 5 minutes of apathetic gyrating before walking off the stage.
Back in the dressing room I warned him that the organiser would be very unhappy with that performance. He should have done 15-20 minutes, full monty and tied up. His response was that that was all he usually did. Well, if that were true he would never be working.

In the second half his co-conspirator did exactly the same thing.

I managed to 'save' the evening by coming up with a third spot right at the end, solely so that the event ended on a high.

The event organiser was livid with them. To my mind they were the most unprepared, amateur charlatans I have every come across. I don't know how little, if anything, the organiser paid them but it was too much. Fortunately, for me, I had nothing to do with booking them and the agency that supplied them, Fantasy Strippers of Newcastle, should be ashamed of themselves.